Yama: the pit eBook

But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked
them for a moment and opened them again. She
gave a long, long stretch, and with a kindly, not
yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin’s
neck with her warm, strong arm.

“Sweetie! Darling!” caressingly uttered
the woman in a crooning voice, somewhat hoarse from
sleep. “Why, I was waiting for you and
waiting, and even became angry. And after that
I fell asleep and all night long saw you in my sleep.
Come to me, my baby, my lil’ precious!”
She drew him to her, breast against breast.

Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble,
as from a chill, and meaninglessly repeating in a
galloping whisper with chattering teeth:

“My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in
a laughing, joyous voice. “Come to me,
my joy!”—­and, overcoming the last,
altogether insignificant opposition, she pressed his
mouth to hers and kissed him hard and warmly—­kissed
him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time
in her life.

“Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?”
declaimed some honest, prudent, and false body in
Lichonin.

CHAPTER XII.

With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward
himself and Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all
the world, Lichonin without undressing flung himself
upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even
gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep
would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved
around this fool action—­as he himself called
the carrying off of Liubka,—­in which an
atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined
with a deep drama. “It’s all one,”
he stubbornly repeated to himself. “Once
I have given my promise, I’ll see the business
through to the end. And, of course, that which
has occurred just now will never, never be repeated!
My God, who hasn’t fallen, giving in to a momentary
laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher or other
has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed
that the value of the human soul may be known by the
depth of its fall and the height of its flight.
But still, the devil take the whole of this idiotical
day and that equivocal reasoner—­the reporter
Platonov, and his own—­Lichonin’s—­absurd
outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in reality,
this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski’s
novel, What’s to be done? And how, devil
take it, with what eyes will I look upon her tomorrow?”

His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his
lips dry. He was nervously smoking a cigarette
and frequently got up from the divan to take the decanter
of water off the table, and avidly, straight from
its mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by
some accidental effort of the will, he succeeded in
tearing his thoughts away from the past night, and
at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images,
enveloped him as though in black cotton.